Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @01:06PM
from the it's-fast-enough-for-you-old-man dept.

Thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and a production crew from Little Mountain Productions, a 9-year-old is getting the best fort ever. The crew is making him a Star Wars-themed fort with a gigantic Millennium Falcon with solar-powered LED interior and exterior lighting to sit on top. No word on how fast it can make the Kessel run, but lets hope the kid gets a long trip.

I'm getting a little tired of people saying that. It may very well have been Lucas not knowing what a parsec was, but it has long been corrected in the canon. The Kessel run was a smuggling route that skirted the Maw black hole cluster. The more daring pilots would take uncharted routes that brought them dangerously close to singularities - hence the bragging of "the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs." Yes, George probably just made an astronomy boo boo. But that was corrected a long time ago in lore, and it's just tiresome when people point that out, not witty.

just because a parallel space is not bound by the laws of the speed of light does not mean that planets don't exist in the parallel locations. The way i always understood it was that hyperspace in star wars was sort of like crawling under the rug, the floor is different down there, but if you run into the couch, it still hurts. (objects of mass effect both locations)

Keep in mind, this is according to Star Wars canon, so flame me not for anything that is impossible, but you have part of a good point. The majority of travel done in the star wars universe is via hyperdrive, which functions vaguely as a wormhole generator - the ship travels to an alternate dimension, and the travel time to an exit point is vastly shortened - thousands of years to hours. This, combined with nonsense like inertial dampeners and "relativistic shielding" allows neat sidestepping of the massive

requiring that your pilot and ship be capable of flying dangerously close to black holes to shave distance off a shipping route is *lame*?
your way requires the cannon to all be altered to change the way the ship engines in the star wars universe work.

Corrected? The movie says what it says, there's no "correcting" to be done. Han's bragging line is what people call "techno-babble". Neither of the sequels make any explanation of this bit of techno-babble, nor do they need to, any more than someone would need to explain what a "hydrospanner" is.

Techno-babble permits inane crap to help move the story from one plot point to the next. When done well, it works like this [imdb.com]:Brandon's Mom: Where are you going with those fireworks?Brandon: Well, the Protector got super-accelerated coming out of the black hole, and it, like, nailed the atmosphere at Mach 15, which, you guys know, is pretty unstable, obviously, so we're gonna help Laredo guide it on the vox ultra-frequency carrier and use Roman candles for visual confirmation.

Well, yes, except that there was not just one black hole but rather a whole bunch of them relatively close together. You can either go waaaaaaay round the whole entire thing at a safe distance, or you can fly smack dab through the middle of them, weaving your way just between the surrounding black holes along a twisting path where their forces pretty much cancel each other out. Needless to say this is a very thin line. With a really souped up engine, you can cut corners, but it’s dangerous... get too

(I am not saying it is not true, it might even be informative. It is, however, irrelevant, because when you mention George's "Kessel boo boo", you are not evaluating his ability to retcon, but his basic astronomy knowledge).

Also
(Time dilation) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjpBjgIMVk [youtube.com]
Lucas might have made a mistake but might be right anyway. The closer to light speed you travel the shorter distance the rider actually sees.

Ok here it is... A faster millennium falcon would defiantly make the Kessel run in fewer parsecs...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction [wikipedia.org]
This might have been added to the script by a staff writer that talked to a university professor back when people gave a damb about science fiction. Now it's all vampires and magical fearies anyway.

Yup, a great charity. One of my nephews took a trip to Florida to do all the theme parks and space centre there. They had a great time. My sons are also eligible, but we'll give them a few more years before we starting thinking about a wish for our oldest (4.5 years). We're thinking one wish will be a trip for sure, maybe both, but its up to them to decide when they're old enough

It'd be better to instead funnel that money to funds for research on diseases that tend to strike people down. Between spending money on a party for someone who's probably going to die and spending that same money on research towards treatments that stop families and communities from losing those people, the latter is a much better use of funds.

Hey son you will be happy to know despite you dying in 2 weeks that someone has contributed $5k to research a cure for your disease.OrHey son you will be happy to know despite you dying in 2 weeks that someone has contributed a weeks worth of time to make you a kick ass fort.

even if you pull all the money spent on stuff like this across the entire world it probably amounts to less than 0.01% of all the money spent on researching disease cures. It'd be a drop in the bucket. Or we can spend that drop making a dying kid's wish come true.

what's the point of living a long life if you can't bring happiness to someone else?

The happiness of having a healthy child and watching them grow into adults (rather than watching them die and trying to mitigate that trauma) is a deeper, more meaningful happiness than giving a kid some toys.

the Star Wars kid [slashdot.org] is filing a suit against the Slashdot community for not building him a Millenium Falcon fort. In a recent interview Ghyslain Raza exclaims, ".. that is totally the coolest thing and all I got was this #@!%$^* iPod".

Dont worry... the plans specify a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the fort. Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction.

Unfortunately though, The shaft is ray-shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes.

Yeah, but the kid with the Millennium Falcon ain't interested in your revolution, man, he's in it for the money. He expects to be well-paid. He's not crazy enough to attack that battle station, that's suicide!